


Sea Changes

by Harukami



Category: Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dreams don't go away even after Rider does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea Changes

The dreams don't go away even after Rider does.

They stick with Waver and he wakes with tears on his cheeks which could be the splash of salt water and the smell of the sea breeze in his nose. Of course, they're not so far from the harbour and it's not so unusual to smell the ocean on the morning air, but it's different. Behind his eyelids are bright skies and he can hear the sound of sand shifting under horses' hooves. He clings to these smells and sounds and memories of the dream as long as he can in the morning before getting up, which isn't all that long. They say 70% of a dream is forgotten upon waking, 90% three minutes later. He knows that and wonders how much he's missing. He wonders how many details he may have been allowed to have in sleep that he's lost by waking up again. 

Perhaps Rider's booming voice. Perhaps the sound of soldiers calling out to each other (in Greek, of course, but in the dream he'd know it, wouldn't he, so it'd be as simple as English or Japanese to him, hearing and understanding)? Perhaps a triumphant cheer, perhaps a party late at night with beer, perhaps that sight of those broad teeth bared in a grin again -- but no, that sort of thought is what makes him think he's embellishing on the dream rather than recalling it. The dreams were always from Rider's perspective, so he wouldn't see Rider's smile in them. At most, he'd look down and see that broad body as his own, unlike the under-developed form he actually bore, hear the voice how it must sound from Rider's perspective, the booming change that would be ever so slightly different than hearing it from the outside.

Still, he'd let himself fantasize a little. He only knew what it was like to be inside Rider's form in the dreams, and only knew what it was like to long for it from outside it.

Of course, as he grew older, studied even further, came to understand magics even more deeply than most powerful Magus families regardless of his ability to _enact_ those magics, it only made sense. The connection between sleep and death had long been known and remarked on by poets for aeons. To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream -- as it were. He had become Rider's Master, and he had become Rider's friend, and he had sworn himself to Rider as his servant and his soldier and to be at his side as a Companion, and the dreams were a natural part of, at least, the first of these things. Time was not linear; he was no longer Rider's Master, but he had _been_ Rider's Master, and so he would always have the continuing experiences associated with being Rider's Master because the connection between a Heroic Spirit and the one who summons them is not so plain and simple as a bond that exists only in the moment. He knows that. He's studied it inside and out and nobody, perhaps, knows it better than he does.

He has had the dreams of being Rider and so he is Rider.

\--Stupid to say it, though, stupid to think it. There's no resemblance between them. But the connection is there regardless.

Some people at the school say that Professor El-Melloi II does not sleep. He stays up all night with his books and his studies. He comes in to class with dark circles from lack of sleep and an abrasive personality not his own but brought on by exhaustion. They are wrong. His skin is naturally pale and the dark circles are there because he sees no need for a care regime that would hide them. He studies but he studies in good time. His abrasive personality -- well, nobody needs to question that _that's_ his own. Idiots. Good idiots all.

Of course he sleeps.

When it is time to be awake and study, he does so; he stays up and works and prepares his understanding and grows closer to the Truth and the potential of the Magus. But he doesn't push his bedtime. When he's tired, he gets ready for bed.

He has a specific bedtime routine: he pours himself a nightcap, and downs it in a shot. It isn't to help him sleep; it's an offering. A libation. Not to the gods, but to one particular one. And then he gets comfortable in his narrow bed, and closes his eyes, and clears them of all thoughts except of sleep and of the ocean and booming voices and thinks, _to you, my lord._

And one day, sometime long in the future, it will be his final sleep, he is sure, and those thoughts will send him onward, truly and simply, to become whatever it is he will become or whoever it is he will become as he joins his lord, as he heads to sea on his final voyage, and conquer that final land.


End file.
